Dune
by Gender Outlaw
Summary: The banners snapped back and forth, back and forth, long trails of red. # Naruto, and sand. He just doesn't die.
1. Chapter 1

The banners snapped back and forth, back and forth, long trails of red. The sharp noise of wind colliding with cloth was soothing to Naruto's ears, almost comforting in a way. He felt less alone.

He stood atop one of the many buildings left in Suna - refined structures of sand and chakra that, even now, stood the test of time. The banners had been infused too with chakra and a special material of shinobi making that helped to protect it from all things. The wind cut over the empty buildings and rode on out undamaged.

Konoha, Naruto had no doubt, was fallen. A city built of wood and little else would not last long against nature and age. He touched his chest, where for years Konohamaru's long scarf used to hang, until it too wore away.

His neck felt cold and empty without it, so he pulled down one of Suna's banners from atop their torrents and wrapped it around his face. He breathed deeply in the telling scent of _heat_ and his own sweat. The burn of flying sand left no other smells.

Heat. It breed and feed and swelled in capacity against the second sun, the reflective heat of dunes rising up from his feet.

Naruto barely remembered the ocean. The only sea he had left now, was a sea of sand, stretching off farther than the eye could ever reach.

The banner was heavy around his shoulders, but he bore the weight. It reminded him almost of Inari and Konhamaru, eaching hanging in their own way on his back. And the memories were all the comforts of companionship he had here, in this empty city centuries since long abandoned.

The world had grown old without him. And Naruto, as human as he was and wasn't, let it be. He had no use for it.

He, of all things, stood the test of time. Staring out into the wild expanse of sand and sun, he could see no end. He is at the edge of eternity.. looking into his own fate.

* * *

_Motivated by NoNoWriter. Is supposed to crossover with Inuyasha, but I've never actually read or seen that series so.. I'll try my best. Please forgive if my best falls short. _

_I love Naruto/Sand with an undying passion, I do. :C_


	2. Chapter 2

He had out-lived them all..

And dark things lived in the desert. Dark, unmentionable things that thrived and flourished in the dead of night where not even the sun could reach. They squirmed beneath the heaving sands, always unseen. Always reaching through the unbreakable surface to grab at unwary prey.

Over the years, Naruto learned to think as of the mind of one. When they squirmed, he squirmed. When they broke for the surface, he broke for the surface.

Needless to say, they never latched around his feet.

* * *

The sea was like sand - No. That is to say, the sand was like a sea; a great, thriving, massive sea tainted yellow. The color of gold, the color of a pulsing sun.

* * *

There are no roads, where he has gone.

The sky ends into land. As far as the eye can see is one horizon, one long line of wild blue burning into gold. Gold, gold, as bright as the sun - No. Brighter even. A fury of fire sweeping beneath his feet.

The grass ends, the ground ends. There are no roads here.

Only fire.

* * *

Dark things live beneath the ground. Dark, unnatural things.

The sand is pitted against itself. It is a thriving sky unto it's own. It tosses and thrashes, darkness falling between flat dunes. The shadows rave.

They call, sometimes .. It is an echoing, almost enchanting sort of melody that leaves no words. What is almost not a voice moves through the underneath, lingers there.

The sound chills his bones.

* * *

A wave, a wave of wind and grains carts over the horizon, flashing into being with a screech and a roar. It churns and rolls, more than water could ever hope to be, and covers everything seen with a deadly fog.

And then, the heavens part, and he steps forth.

* * *

It was as simple as living into eternity.

Age was always one of the old curses, driven to those with doom that could not be quelled by mere death or punishment. Being unable to die was, easily, the harshest thing he could have imagined one to suffer.

Naruto never tested the limits of his own body for it's capacity to heal from extreme odds and stress, but as he entered his adult years, he already knew his life would be different.

There his friends were, growing old beside him and dying while he never changed. Never _aged_.

They grew fat, their bones started collapsing onto themselves, like broken towers falling. Wrinkly skin that thins itself out until not even what was left of skin could cover their fading bodies. Naruto's friends grew old and died.

Konoha grew old. Vines reaching up from underneath, buildings wearing down to termites and sun and wind. The grass conquered the roads, and what home he could remember quickly passed away.

Every hour he spent in that village, as his family grew old without him, was a torture of itself. It was a punishment, for being different, for not changing. Why should his hair still be so bright? His eyes unclouded with murky white? Why should his skin still be strong and tan, and his muscles never wither away?

Why should he live, while they die?

It was as simple as immortality. And this immortality was something that Naruto just couldn't bear in a village of humans, knowing now that he _wasn't_. Knowing what he was..

So he left, and traveled to the east, heading every day into the rising sun.

Until the day that the sun never set, golden sands burning around him in all directions. His eyes burned, his skin burned, like he was being consumed by flames, on fire from the inside out.


	3. Chapter 3

The desert is hot because he is in it.

The heat rolls off Naruto like a wave. He is not human, not anymore. But can he really be anything else?

Time has closed his throat, sealing that voice of his into a distant whisper of memory. It has wrapped itself tightly around him, so close that nothing moves. Nothing penetrates. He doesn't die, and the sun rises and falls in continuous motions that he quickly looses track of.

Things grow around him. Small weeds, itching at the heels of his bare feet. A lizard treading where one should not tread, and not returning.

Far to the west, where the sun lingers with a haze, humans fall. They gather and splinter. Wood is reluntantly dragged from it's once existance. It is set and supported against the wind and sand. Tunnels are dug into too-dry soil, and water leeches it way through.

They build a village. Many gather, and then many decay. Lines break in their homes, until it is but a sparse scattering of buildings clinging to the last dregs of life and civilization in the places where green almost dares not to grow.

The arid sand sweeps through the town, burning the sides of their homes. There is a solid divide between desert and land, the grass feebly laying a path to the edge of it.

They are slowly dying out.

All across the world, humans are slowly dying out. Creatures rise up against them, almost unaging and unlined. They split and divide, and conquer the world with grow like a rapidly spreading weed.

These things become demons. They have no known origins, merely growing like the wild expanse of forest and humid putrid air that fills. The green is almost a saintly color - it pitches against itself, warping and wrapping. The solid brown and gray of wood, trees, is contained barely within.

They live.

--


	4. Chapter 4

There are rumors, of living sand.

No one has ever seen anything, not young wandering child nor withering elder. There are no reports of fangs, flashes of death, or blood-curling echoes of pain. But still they know.

The light rises, the sun rises from the desert. It spreads and grows, a hastily expanding ball of heat and force. This brillance lingers at the edges of their civlization, it is fierce and no man would be fool enough to mistake that.

It is the death to wander past the smatterings of a village, to become hopelessly lost and forgotten.

The sands writes the names of every thing it takes against the leathery skin of these struggling humans.

* * *

Sango has come, all this way. She brings nothing with her but her body and her being, her possessions. There are no accompaniments, no companions.

The wealth of sun and wind beats over her face, her back.

She loosens her sleeves, and seriously considers dropping the load she carries to sink beneath the drifting sands. But her life is held between the bands of tightened cloth. To seperate from water is to seperate from life, and she would not have that.

It is no instant gratification, the immortality of the desert takes it time stripping her skin to brazen patches of red and pain. She is burned from the inside out, and finds herself no cooler as the sun sets. Her sweat drips until it dries, the very source and root this barren.

She thirsts, but the canteen is empty.

From horizon to horizon the sky is blazed with orange. Brilliant gold combing hectic lines through the steep cliffs and hills. The setting sun paints stripes of red through both air and land, as if there is nothing seperating, as if they are but one.

Why has she come..?

* * *

The storms gather and linger.

They move, as if under some command, to sweep invisible brushes against the earth. Her tracks are erased as Sango lingers as she can beneath a thick cloth blanket, the torrents of heat lashing against her even through that.

The world tilts and for the life of her, she wouldn't be able to tell from whence she came. It is all one solid line of gold. Burning into eternity.

* * *

What she would do for water.

What _wouldn't_ she do. Her throat burns and spasms with the effort of breathing. It is parched all the way down straight into her intestines. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth and she gasps as she stumbles.

The day lingers, and her clothes peel off as she moves, clingling like glue to her body.

In the distance she can see a ball of light, slowly fading.

She prays for darkness to rise.

* * *

The night is living behind her eyelids.

She can feel the wind etching lines against her reddened and sore flesh, but Sango can't bring herself to rise. Her head sinks beneath the sand just by the weight of it all. She can no longer carry herself.

She doesn't even bother. Sango knows she should, but to venture further in any direction is to wither away from existance. She can see no signs of neither human nor demon.

She is lost far beyond the terms of where lost could define.

The sand chokes her breathes, and she tries to swallow against it, beating a fury at having to linger motionless. At being _unable_.

Against her side, a light roars and steadily rises. Has the sun risen already?

Her sight fades from vision to dreams, and she is not sure in which world that figure lingering at the edges of the light exists.


	5. Chapter 5

_".. there is an old fox demon living somewhere out in the desert. If you can find him."_

He is the light, he is the sun.

He is standing there when she awakens, so sure that Sango would have sworn in her own blood that she had seen the sun rising from the west.

He is tall and lanky, and besides that, she hasn't a clue, because he is filled and surrounded by a blinding white light, as if he has never had a shadow. Never dimmed.

The night retreats away from him, slithering away in wisps and snake-like tentacles. It cries out, and though she knows not the words, the language leaves an echoing sort of pain against her soul.

What is he ..? This sharp mockery of sun is actually fighting the night? How can he attack something inanimate?

Ah, but it is not.

Her skin itches where it rests against the ground, her own shadow burning faintly against her. She can smell the skin smoldering beneath her, beneath her clothing. It is important, and she knows. There is no reluctance as Sango strips quickly of all cloth and stands as bare as the sand.

His brillance etches out all lines of darkness, not even faint whispers remaining where sun had not shined on her skin. She has known foul enemy by instinct alone, and has no fear of her own nudity.

_Are you..? _Could he be anything but what she had searched for? In a land utterly devoid of life, there would be little question.

* * *

Shippou is young, even to demons.

This is obvious to even the most casual observer. Kagome ignores what she understands so well that Miroku wonders if she's even noticed at all.

But it is Shippou himself that suggests it, asks..

In all their travels, where have they found another like his father? Where have they found any like him? He must learn these things somehow, he must become what he was born to be, he must develop.

To develop instincts that one has little memory of, there are few harder traits. They begin to openly search, but still are without distinct results.

Few fox demons live to long enough a state to be of suitable use. Few of anything, in fact, live that long at all, but this only hinders their efforts the more.

The word is passed through sake and hangovers, and no amount of trying could ever amount the source of this. But be a rumor or a legend or even an outright lie, it is worth pursuing.

It is worth the try.

* * *

Sango hasn't a clue who she's following.

Though she's asked, cajoled and coaxed, and even resorted to straight goading with verbal threats, he does not respond. Through the bright flashes of solid white, she can't see anything slightly resembling a detail, but he - this figure, creature - does not reply in any kind of voice she can hear.

It is by mere personal whimsy and fancy that she follows him.

The night grows only the stronger around them, itching and edging around their lines but never crossing. And she thinks of how late the hour must be.

The smell of water hangs in the air, and just the sweat of it - the scent - coats the back of her throat and gives her pause.

* * *

She runs through the dunes, speed tripping her feet farther than unsteady grain and soil could. She slips and falls, but still reaches the oasis before this strangeness she has been following.

Beyond the illuminance of his shadows, she can not see far. But roots pilfer across the ground and through the musty blue of water .. water that is bubbling, _boiling.._

He is standing knee-deep in the blue, and the liquid rolls in rapidly decreasing bubbles away from him. He is heat, he is solid heat incarnate. He is the sun.

The light fades slowly, the water stilling with it. Seeping carefully back, whispering in echoes as it is dragged with amber leisure. It is reverse draining.

It is moving in waves, rolling inward, back into his flesh. He is collecting this intensity with a passive demeanor, and steps further into the water. The very air around them begins to cool itself and drops, laden with this ferocity, to the ground.

And Sango is resting with her back to scratchy bark, made all the more so for her burned skin. The air is filled with oxygen, with living breath and she inhales it deeply. The shadows are cool here, and soothe her soul.

Her eyes fight to pierce the night, only discerning a lingering form standing in the water. Standing motionless and staring at a point in the distance away from her.

She fights fruitlessly against the encompassing sleep. It possesses and claims her with a hungry urgency. She is tired straight down to her bones, and passes out with her head still leaning against the firmness of desert foilage. Trees in a land without water..


	6. Chapter 6

It was in the asking, that she knew.

Sango is not too surprised to wake alone, and clothes herself quickly when she hears rising voices from a ridge just before her. Her garments are soaked with dried sweat, and prove to be a difficult endeavor against the growing sheen of liquid coating her skin.

The dunes become almost a friendly sort of thing, though, in the presence of water.

She falls to her knees at the water's edge, recognizing with certain familiarity exactly who those vibrant tones belong to. She prays in thirst.

It is exotic, to coat her burning wrists in the cool sweat of shade and flowing blue. It seeps between her fingers, and she bows forward, the sand beneath her knees spreading as she slides it into mud.

She is absorbed in dunking her head beneath this miniature lake when Miroku stops beside her. She closes her eyes and can feel the dirty grains of sand brush against her eyelashes as she sweeps her head back and forth underwater, breathing. Inhaling.

She consumes with passion, and jerks her head back up, into air, with a sudden movement and wide eyes, and she feels so _alive_.

The desert is still there, all around her, linger with a faint hazy in distance just enough to fill her mind with giddy joy.

Oh yes, she had known in the asking. Kagome should have been the one. She had a way about her. Kagome kept a familiarity around such words of requesting assistance. She would have known how to, and not been afraid of the asking.

* * *

_'.. someone is coming', _he thinks internally in careful slowness. The words wait in his mind for entrance, patiently.

Naruto feels the cold coming. He keeps his back to the sun, and pauses where he stands. The sand stirs at his feet and burns without flame. He is still just as lean and lanky as before, just as tanned. The heat swelters and holds court against him, and though he notices it not his skin browns, his hair lightens.

He lets the wind move through him, keeping his mind by measured movements.

There is the world, the tattered shack who holds a greatness inside and he has a deep yearning for it's innards. A monument of wood sinking gradually beneath the onslaught of sand and torrents.

He escapes the desert through a half-open door, following the fading trail of golden grain to worn gray wood planks. The floor creaks under his step but he bears no thought for it.

There is all that was left in the world for him, there are the remains of Gaara's face carved in shallow golden bronze. What is left of it all..

He sleeps with open eyes at the base of the temple.


	7. Chapter 7

There are bones in the dust. There is blood in the sand.

Naruto can feel it, he can taste these things in the back of his mind like lucid illusions. Vivid sensations of lies, a mirage. But they are there.

Surrendered to the dunes, the tattered cloth of failed travelers waves in the torrent of gust and sand. The bones are markers for the dead, testaments to those who would perish by seeing this warning. White, marred white fragmented with dusty grains, it reflects even for miles, these bones.

They are often enough in the curving dunes, but not this far out.

Naruto sleeps at Gaara's temple, and gathers the bones of his enemies around him like a fortress. The living sand swallows it whole before this door. And sometimes, in the middle of the night when he is not quite awake and not quite asleep, he can hear it whispering to him.

* * *

Naruto loves the sun.

It exhausts him, he would admit, to be in it all the time, letting such intense frustration of heat filter through him like a screen. But he does not mind.

The sun is large and immense in the sky. It hangs like a swollen wound so close he could reach up and touch it, grasp at the core and center. And he dearly wants to, has and holds this constant desire firmly to himself, barely resisting.

It too, calls to him. But in larger motions, and though the language is as wordless as the sand's it is far harsher. And yet, feels more like home.

Kyuubi is in the sun. His memories, too, are in the sun.

He laces them to himself with silent ambition, standing all day staring at it from atop the dunes.

* * *

He steals things, in the middle of the night.

Naruto knows where the humans live. He follows the whispering echoes of civilization crying over the desert. The light of a single fire he can see for miles off. These things carry unerringly well over the flat carved by the wind.

He finds where the last human settlement is, sneaks through it as easily as if it were just yesterday. Yesterday that he and .. there was something about missions, were there not? He had a duty to accomplish. He had a defined purpose.

But he can no longer remember. It eludes and escapes him, and though he tries grasping firmly they slip steadily through his grasp.

Naruto steals what pleases him, in the quiet cover of darkness and ingrained, learned, instincts. His footsteps tread so silently that they leave no imprint in the sand.

Trinkets, things that reflect the light.. he pulls a blanket off a crib that is so soft it is like touching water. It is an almost-memory he loves to hold close in the fury of sandstorms. A belt, now worn half-away, with a tarnished silver clasp and engraved carvings. He knows not the worth of these things.

He carries them back over the mountains of desert sand. Stopping so often again, and again, to examine what he has found. Sometimes dropping and loosing pieces in the moving sand by neglect and carelessness. Sometimes just dropping what he grows bored with.

He stores these things where he sleeps. Beneath the monument of his old friend, is a storage celler, full of dark things. Living things, that hide in the shadows and eat flesh.

It is a tunnel to nowhere, that the sand has mostly eatten. But this is where he keeps his treasure.

Naruto may not remember Gaara, exactly, but he knows how close the sand was to this person. The temple, though falling, is precious to him and he tries to ask the sands of this once friend, but the grains reply in no words he knows any meaning for.


	8. Chapter 8

_"Vengeful spirits,"_ the Medicine-seller tells Miroku over a cup of shared tea in the inn. _"They always turn into demons."_

It is past midnight nearly a week since Sango, Miroku, and Shippo have traveled to this town so far from the rest of the world that even the humans living here seem to have traces of demonic auras lingering about them, clinging to them.

Miroku has not seen Sango for several days, though he looks the town over so much that the residents know him just by the sound of his voice. They tell him she was probably swallowed up by a sandstorm, but this is no consolation.

The nights are restless for him, and despite lying in bed for hours all he can manage to summon is a stomachache that leaves his whole body sore, and makes him want to throw up.

So he leaves Shippo sleeping in their shared room and heads to the kitchen to find a strange man in a heavy kimono already there, still awake. There is kettle of tea steaming on the table, and the man hands Miroku a cup without saying a word.

This man only introduces himself as a 'medicine seller', and claims to have been just passing through an area that is near no roads.

Miroku responds by simply referring to his own self as a 'traveling monk', and they begin to talk about the aspects of his profession.

The man is peculiar, and his veiled comments seem to hold an underlying experience that is more than mere opinions. His explanations offer no clarifications, and Miroku is wary enough to suspect this person of Sango's disappearance.

But, though he tries all night to grill the _Medicine-seller_ for answers, to slip into the truth he is looking for from careful guarded words, he gets nowhere.

And wakes to find himself jerking into sudden awareness at sunrise, his face sore from being pressed against the table, his body stiff from the awkward position, and splinters in his cheek as he tries to remember just when he fell asleep.

The room is empty but for the sounds of waking patrons drifting through it, and Miroku throws his chair back when he stands.

An hour later, armed with as much water as he can carry, Shippo, Kilala, and a faint sense of lingering demonic chakra to the east, they head into the desert.

* * *

The villagers leave things out for the demon in the desert. Trinkets, toys, food.

The inn Sango and Miroku are staying in, the woman whose house this is bakes a fresh loaf of bread every night just to leave out in the sands for the demon.

When they ask, she says _Sometimes he comes, and sometimes he doesn't._ But she never sees him either way.

* * *

Soon, the sun is beginning to set, and Kilala is growing weary. They have made a good amount of distance and so set down in a dark valley between the dunes, where it is sure to be cool.

* * *

And Kagome is walking the streets at night, in her hometown, in her own city. The night is full of rain and dimly lit streetlights reflecting off the blacktop. Tiny feet dance across her umbrella, but she knows that were she to throw it aside, toss it away like so much rubbish, there would be no one there.

No one standing at the corner by the bus stop, the bench cold and hard concrete. Dim green plastic distorting the overhead light of the seat. Part of a newspaper left behind, writing on more than half.

And she walks the streets at night, heading home, wanting home. She feels like a broken bell, hollow, one that rings but makes no sound.

There are no demons, no monster cats or flying magic. Nothing either good or bad of the fairytales she learned by heart every night, at bedtime.

She is alone, in the city.

* * *

- Cameo from _Mononoke_, the series. He's a real cool guy.

I'd be surpised if anyone knew this series offhand, so I'll shorthand for you; the _Medicine-seller _is sort of a demon-slayer and a bit of a demon or god himself, it's impossible to tell. He has seals that demon-spirits can't cross. For our purposes, demons with a body can cross them - Shippo, Naruto.

He'll show up only once more, because I cut chapter 8. The second half is chapter 10 or 11, I think.

I wonder if anyone has written a story where Shippo's father didn't really die, but was just skinned alive and survived it. To be missing for so long though, he either would have to take that long to heal, or have lost his memory in the process of. And if Naruto was that man..

(But that's neither here nor there.)


	9. Chapter 9

The desert at night, it is almost beautiful.

The sky still holds traces of red from the hot hot day, and the sand - the sand is like finely crumbled snow. But so bizarrely devoid of any trace of characteristic cold dampness. It is solid, delicate grains that sweep through the wind.

Eerily cool, as if it shouldn't exist. Not like this.

There is almost a mystic, magical feel to the place at night, with the gold of earth paled to a such soft white by the moon. The echoing heat from the sun stays reflected and burns still beneath his feet slightly as he stands.

For miles Miroku can see. Miles and miles and miles.

The sky is full of black inky dots, like hundreds of tiny holes in a dyed blanket. One that has been left out to the moths in the attic. Only on far grander scale.

Hundreds of lights.

He is nearly a mile from the campsite, he has counted his steps, but even from this distance he can see the steady glow from their fire as if he were still standing right there before it.

The sky turns to an eerie mixture of red and black, as if it were almost painted on. And, at night, the sand dulls to a soft white shade. An odd combination of hues that send a sharp chill down his spine.

He feels out of place. The land has a taint of mystical air to it like this.

It is unnatural, it is no place for a human.

And he is certain that even if he walked until morning, he would still be able to see this soft red light. The dancing spark of flame, from no matter how far he goes.

* * *

Miroku wouldn't be surprised to find dragons sleeping here in the crevices between the dunes, myths and children's fairytales though they be. This desert area has that much a feel of timelessness to it.

Even more of a fairytale, actually, than Kagome's wild claims of men walking in space. Of large metal things she called machines which were supposed to stay aloft in the air with no wings, no heart beating, no sentience at all.

When the only machines he knew of were crude, rudimentary, and more trouble than they were worth.

* * *

Sango will have lost all track of time by the moment Miroku and Shippo find her, but a few weeks have past since the day the two of them, the young fox, and Kilala first entered the village.

They walked in, under their own power, and immediately secured a room at the local inn - a place so ill-used that it became a sort of storehouse. With boxes and jars of dried preservatives nestled deep in the dug-out basement.

Sango slept between a crate of old, useless harnesses that would no longer fit the horses, and a box of children's toys.

_"There's a legend in this village,"_ Miroku started to tell her when she walked down the stairs into the kitchen. He pauses, then glances across the room at the cook before continuing.

_"Some call it an old god, but I think it could just be a demon. They say something visits this village in the middle of the night and takes things."_

A thieving demon? Well, some do. Despite how they rage against humanity, the creatures still seem drawn to human toys.

_"These people."_ Miroku's voice lowered to a whisper and said, _"They think they will be favored if the demon steals something from them. So they leave things out. Trinkets, toys. Anything to attract the demon's attention."_

And there it was. Sitting in the windowsill and very much out of place, was a silver gravy boat. Polished to an impossibly high shine and without a purpose.

A beautiful quilt carefully handstitched from tattered scraps, more colors than Sango had seen in her life, and tied to the doorknob of the house across the street. Being beaten by the wind as they talked.

The place is small, too small to be called a village even really. There's just a handful of houses, barely huddled close. The wind walks right through, and in the spaces between, Sango can see wide glances of the desert, taunting her.

Looming, as massive as a threat, everywhere.

* * *

The day after they arrived in this small outpost where humans, without much of a reason of because they _can_, fight to survive in a land that seems all but set on killing them. The day after, Sango woke up early and left the room.

She headed down the stairs, intent on a short walk around the perimeter of the area, and stepped out of the makeshift inn. The abandoned inn.

The specious building that blocked her view of the rising winds until she was already in them.

Her only warning was a faint screeching sound that made her half-turn, more than sure some demonic creature was wailing behind her.

A echo of something she had never heard before in her life, had no memory of being told of something like it, an unearthly wail that rose up behind her to a roar and swallowed her up, whole.

The entire world around her suddenly turned into dust. As if she was a demon, expelled into nothingness. Immediately lost.

She screams, but her voice is lost beneath the shriek of sand and wind raging all around her. She turns, intent on the building - _any_ building - but it is not there.

She lunges forward, sweeps her arms out to the side, runs. Certain of her own location.

The sands turns to tiny daggers, fragmented shards of glass that blind her as they swirl into her eyes, circling a hundred miles an hour with no clear destination. A tornado of sand. She shields her face with her arm, breathes through her shirt, but it is not enough.

She is in a cloud, an earthly cloud piecemealed from dust and dirt, screaming at the top of her lungs, but no one can hear her.

The buildings are built too far apart, she turns to where the nearest should be, but they are too far, too far apart and she slips right through.

Sango yells but there is no one to listen. Only the sandstorm.

She covers her face with one arm as she gropes against the blinding wave with the other and walks between the houses, runs right past without even knowing until hours later, when she is throwing up sand and all alone in the middle of the desert.


	10. Chapter 10

At nightfall, his skin begins to burn and itch, and then prickle with such a ferocity that his flesh is actually bubbling from it before he realizes.

If it weren't for the fact that there aren't enough auras from other beings here to disguise the faint presence Miroku would never have known. There are demons in the shadows, spirits in the night that cower there and slowly eat the living.

* * *

From Kilala's back, Miroku can see oft to the horizon. The sand village is behind him, almost buried.

As the days came and went, they took to scouting through the sand for Sango. Looking for dropped belongings, footprints. Shades of her former self in the shadows of the buildings.

Venturing as far as they dared into what threatened to loom up so well and swallow them whole. Never letting it out of sight, the village. That small scattering of petrified wood mostly consumed with sand. More a tomb than a city.

But, Sango had left her weapons behind. She couldn't have gone far, could she?

* * *

They have no physical form, but he can feel them scratching at his back and skin, under his clothes, in the spaces without light before the idea comes.

And Miroku is telling Shippo to build a fire through the fabric of his own robe even as he's pulling it over his head. Who can barely stop clawing frantically at the flesh of his arms to comply.

* * *

There are sutras slapped on every poor shanty in what passes for a village on the edge of the desert. Strange sorts of prayer papers, with a red eye on each sheet, gaze firmly fixed on the sands.

The Medicine-seller passes through the town in the space between dawn and dusk, and lets himself into the inn through the back door. He pours himself a cup of tea, and waits.

Come morning, he slips out as easily as he came, leaving the innkeeper startled and deeply confused by this strange man who wears a heavy kimono in the swelter of the sun.

_"You should not worship him,"_ the Medicine-seller warns before he leaves, satisfied for now with what he finds. _"He is no true god."_

_

* * *

_

They have little firewood, but their bedrolls burn slowly through the night - a poor substitute - thanks mostly to Shippo's inexperienced, sweat-laden efforts at controlling the flames. But it still burns, and come morning most of the fabric has been sacrificed.

Miroku bundles the rest as best he can into tight rolls, the cloth heavy with the putrid smell of burning.

* * *

Around noon of the next day they come across two withered trees, almost dead from the heat and offering not an inch of shade.

The sun has left them all so worn and damaged, that with one good kick to each Miroku is easily able to bring them both crashing to the sand, where they are snapped into pieces.

Kilala is persuaded to resume her full form, and the petrified wood is torn down and piled on her.

* * *

Now that he knows they are there, Miroku can feel the faintest traces of demonic aura - so soft it's almost not there at all - lingering beneath the shifting sands.

Shippo mentions once, a few days later, that he can almost hear voices, but there is no one around beyond them and he can't make out any of the words.

The desert is _haunted_.

* * *

After a week, Miroku has used up all of his sutras exercising the spirits, and has to make more out of scraps of bark.

There are so many he has no hope of banishing them all, but he begins to see a clear pattern in their appearances. They always arrive from one direction, due east. And as daylight strikes, the trendils of darkness worm their way to the safety beneath the sands, and head back into the rising sun.

They _are_ like worms, slithering away from him without a fight when he sweeps a blazing branch around their campsite. The embers flickering off into the air and landing on the night with faint whisps of smoke as _something_ burns.

The spirits do not like the light. _Of course._

But Miroku wonders what they are haunting so venomously that they would risk being burned so painfully every day for.

He will never know; the spirits either don't seem capable of, or just aren't inclined to real speech - he can't tell which. And the one person who could give an answer he will never ask.

Which is just as well, because Naruto will never remember.

* * *

_Note: _Say hello to the _Medicine-seller_ again. I don't think he'll show up after this, though. I know that most stories have pairings, but unless I specifically say there is a pairing, don't expect one.


	11. Chapter 11

_".. what was she doing so far out from where anyone could find her?"_ Shippo thinks to himself when he and Miroku finally find Sango.

* * *

The further they venture into the desert, the more intense the concentration of demon-spirits become, until it's almost a tangible presence surrounding them, always, under the sand. Hidden, until nightfall.

They sleep in the day, spread out like roadkill over the sands, the intense blaze of the sun leaving them always, just on the edge of sleep.

Come nightfall, Kilala rises from the sands before the spirits can latch onto her, and carries Miroku high across the dunes, as far as she dares. The insomnia slowly eatting her spirit until she can barely walk, when they do land, little feet wobbling beneath her.

Shippo ventures off in the air to the side as much as he is able, maintaining his bubble-like form. But he is still too young, not strong enough to maintain it for long, and has come back every few minutes to rest on Kilala's back.

The spirits are bound to the sands, unable to fly. They squirm beneath the airborne travelers, leeches in the sand, blood-sucking worms in mud, able to sense the lure of flesh far above them.

Miroku senses the presence from miles off.

* * *

At first it's faint beneath the echoing taint of the phantoms, like blue smoke nestled in a sea of black - nearly invisible.

The closer they get, the stronger it becomes. Until Miroku is left with nothing but certainty that there is a demonic presence in the east. One solid and tangible, unlike the ghosts of the dead. There is enough difference in their auras for him to be sure.

It is the difference between a boulder and a thousand tiny misquitos, fleeting in the wind. Between smoke, and the flame.

In the direction of the rising sun.

* * *

_Another Note:_ They should meet somewhere around Ch15. I've been milking it because there's not too much past that. And, these last few chapters I wasn't really happy with and the time I waited to post for, I was trying to think of ways to improve them.

If you have any ideas, or questions, or anything at all, just drop me a note and I'll get right on it.


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